The woman is made as an ezer kenegdo — long rendered “an help meet for him,” which slid over the centuries into “helpmate,” a kind of junior assistant. But ezer is the same word the Bible uses for God rescuing his people — “my help comes from the LORD” (Psalm 121:2) — and most of its twenty-one appearances are God riding to the rescue, often in war. Kenegdo means “matching him, face to face”: an equal counterpart, not a lesser one. The strength was always in the word; only the reading lost it.